Sharon Astyk

Gertrude Jekyll meets edible landscaping: The ornamental edible border

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Ok, you know about edible landscaping – you’ve replaced your burning bush with blueberries and your spireas with elderberries. You’ve trained that grapevine over the arbor. Now you are eying that space on your front lawn where the perennial border is (or should be or used to be or is in your head). You want flowers. You need flowers because they make you happy. Maybe you have to grow flowers there if you grow much of anything but grass, because of neighbors or zoning laws. Can you grow an ornamental flower garden that is totally edible? Yes. Yes, you can!

Dissident economists on the warpath

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As an academic economist I find I am living in interesting times. Yes, really. The profession is in crisis, and much blame is being laid at the door of those who teach politicians how the economy works, and who engage in research to support this teaching. The fact that the financial crisis was predicted only by dissident economists, and the lamentable failure of mainstream economists to explain what has happened, much less provide solutions, has led to severe criticism.

How you can become a commoner

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Commoning represents a “third way”—not locked into the profit-driven mechanics of the market nor solely dependent on government agencies—that enables everyday citizens to actively make decisions and take actions that shape their future of their communities. Although most folks who do it, probably don’t call it “commoning”— they simply think of it as “common sense” or the “common good”.

Oman’s unrest may be a domino, not just to suppliers, but also to customers

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There are reports that the unrest in the Middle East has spread to the Sultanate of Oman. While at the moment there have been only one or perhaps two deaths, small in number relative to the larger number of fatalities in countries like Libya, such a milepost, nevertheless, is sadly likely to indicate that the situation will get much worse. … Oman is not a member of OPEC, but contains the largest oil reserves of any country outside that group in the Middle East.